Check out my cycle animations
http://ezromation.bizhat.com/Animation0.html
animated apes also come with wings (but they dont make you want to roller skate with dogs)
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
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websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
Very cool stuff. Are you a film or game animator? Just curious.
Just a brief critique (if that's what you were looking for):
The regular walk looks good, if a touch slow (it's hard to tell if Flash is running at full speed, so this comment may not apply). When he steps with his left leg, there's a good solid feel to the walk, when he steps with his right leg, it feels soft, like he doesn't weigh quite as much.
On the Mech cycle and Monkey Run, I think I saw some IK snapping. It's subtle and on the Mech Cycle it may work for you. My personal philosophy is to avoid it (even with robots), you loose some control over the animation and (again in my opinion) it doesn't look quite as good as you doing the "snap" intentionally. On the other hand, maybe it's my imagination and it's fine.
On the Mech Cycle it looks like it's happening when the leg is fully extended backwards. On the Monkey it looks like his right arm is snapping (possibly several times) as he extends and plants it on the ground.
One more question with the Flying Ape, why does he slow down as his feet are passing his arms? It feels like he's going into slow motion briefly. Again, this may be the result of slow Flash playback, I'd be interested if others are seeing the same thing.
Other than those nitpicky details, I really like your stuff. There's some very nice detail work on what the character is doing. I didn't get a chance to look at the AVI stuff (computer at work is finicky).
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com
Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight
Thanks for the response, :) so far I have only done games work. I am trying to get back into games at the moment. It is proving to be quite difficult, I just passed a first interview and am about to take the second one, which is a two day animation test.
I'm pretty sure its a case of flash running slow, the animation was done at 24 frames a seond, I put flash up to 27 frames a second, which looked all right on my computer, but from the internet it still runs slow. Would it be better to use quick time? I noticed a lot of other people use that for there web sites. I generally use avi with the DivX fast motion compressor but maybe its not the best choice. Ive not had much feed back, so I'm grateful to hear something back here.
I think thats fair comment on the crit. Interesting about the soft step its actually ik snap thats making the other leg look right, when it plays faster I think it looks better, same with the monkey run, he drops quicker as his arms go out behind him but its better at a faster speed. On the ik side of things I can only get um... is it called single chain solver I cant remember, any way I cant find the pole vector control for it, I dont think it has one, so yes its not as smooth as I would like. However I was pretty happy with the monkey run as thats my first attempt at that kind of movement. I want to try and get a horse done at some point.
Also I was wondering I took about half a day on each of those cycles I wondered how that compared with other peoples work rates.
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
Cool. 1/2 a day? Faster than I could probably do at that quality. But I'm not much of an animator at the moment, other "pros" might be able to weigh in on this.
Hmm, IK snapping on the "heavy" leg, funny how important the camera angle is (it hides the problem here and makes it work!) to animation. I've always been impressed by game animators being required to animate for all camera angles. Tricky stuff.
To fix them, you don't need to deal with the pole vector, just nudge the appendage in question in a hair closer to the body until the elbow/knee has a tiny bend in it. And unless I'm misunderstanding what your saying, the pole vector just helps define which direcion the joint is pointing.
As far as compression... That's a tough one. You're typically better off choosing a universally accepted format. Flash is good, but it can be processor intensive. It's odd, I have a very fast computer that should play it back fine once it's downloaded. I'll try it on a different computer tonight if I can remember. You might be better off lowering the frame rate (even if you use Quicktime). Video on the computer can be a tricky thing, and expecting too much from some one else's machine can have poor results (they often don't give recruiters the same work horses that the employees are using).
As far as format, Flash is all right, but Quicktime may be a little safer. It's as well accepted as Flash and designed for video playback (like if they want to download and step through it or look at a still). I'd stay away from DIVXX. It's one more codec that may not be installed on someone's computer.
And when in doubt, send them a DVD. Then you'll be sure that it plays back at speed. I look at the internet as my second choice for showing off my reel.
Just a little diclaimer that none of this is fact, just my opinions on it. Others may disagree.
In any event, I imagine you'll do well. Your work is very nice. Please keep us posted on your progress.
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com
Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight
To me the mech almost looks like it has more life to it than the "monkey walk" animation. On the latter, at everything but the contact the leg movement feels a bit mechanical still. The arms and the overlap on the wings feel like they're in slow-motion, and it's accented by what appears to be relatively even spacing. The result is that there's not a lot of convincing weight going on.
I would keep the spacing pretty close together at the highest point of his stride, but really slam down into the lowest point. To get back to the higher you could just reverse it and count on the idea of his muscles being strong enough proportional to his own imagined poundage that they shoot him forward and up, where he slows more as he approaches the highest point again.
What might help is doing more than one pair of steps (especially if you're going to have the mouth jiggle, because the redudancy quickly becomes distracting from the rest of the animation and it looks more like the start of speech), and also walk -somewhere- with him, and just take out the forward movement elements of the graph to return it to a walk-in-place cycle. You might get a better idea of the mechanics that way.
In the "monkey run" I like the movements a lot better (though the animation quality has similar hangups), but the biggest thing is to make sure the legs coming forward have the same amount of snap as the push back. The way he's going now is hardly efficient and comes across, again, as a slowdown as they come forward. If he's as strong as he should be the arms are pushing him off which should add to the momentum of his legs being dragged forward and setting up for their -own- push-off. I also think overall the whole thing could be faster, because this is more of a ticked-off staccato skipping "gait" than a form of a running locomotion that he might actually use.
I have just done=-------....sorry my cat decided to walk across the key board (maybe she has something to say?) anyway I have just done this new walk cycle
http://ezromation.bizhat.com/RobotWalk.html
and I have tried to improve on my previous cycles based on the crit I received please tell me what you think.
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
thats really cool. me likes.
"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo
Cheers blink I like that kind of crit :)
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
I could really see the weight of your character. Putting bounce in the knees is a good touch.
Thanks very much :) I just recently did a two day interview, where they asked me to do a atlas ball lift. I have seen this type of animation around, and it seems to be a fairly standard test. What other standard tests are there? apart from the bouncing ball and walk cycle, is there something else which comes up alot?
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings
A lift =) Jumps with anticipation is another one.
atlas ball is a lift, you mean lift heavy object right, atlas ball is big heavy stone ball, never mind. I have been meaning to do a horse for ages but never get round to building the model.
Thanks anyway, anyone else got something they were specificaly asked to do for an interview or test?
websiteEzromation blog/doodlesDeranged Scratchings